Balancing Public Health And Freedom: The New CDC Director
June 9th, 2009
 by
Richard Carmona
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The appointment of Dr. Thomas Frieden as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a triumph for public health and the American people. A passionate and well-informed professional, Frieden has been unusually successful as New York City’s Public Health Commissioner. In that role, with the strong backing of Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Frieden was able to greatly expand smoke-free areas in restaurants and other public areas, decrease smoking among adolescents, eliminate trans fat from foods sold by purveyors, and promote other initiatives that have led to improvements in the health of many New Yorkers.
Now, Frieden is moving to a larger stage, and, inevitably, the triumphs he achieved in New York will be cast in a broader political light. Besides the plaudits that led President Barack Obama to appoint him, there could also be cries that Frieden is overreaching and creating a “nanny state” from those who believe that government should not stick its nose into the private lives of individual citizens.
In a perfect world, the goal of public health should be to educate and empower all of our citizens to help them make well-informed decisions that will translate into healthy lifestyles without undue government intrusion. Unfortunately, in the real world, there are numerous confounding factors that challenge the ideal, such as poor health literacy; social factors such as education, income, and neighborhoods; and other factors that make public health an imperfect market.
As Frieden takes over the directorship of the CDC, he will become a leading figure in the ongoing struggle to balance good public health – as grounded in scientific evidence – with perhaps an equal societal imperative: the right of individuals to live independently without undue government intrusion. Balancing individual rights with the increasing preventable disease and economic burden of society at large, as well as the fiduciary responsibility of government, will continue to be a public health challenge.
